Hi there,

I have a 4 year old home with an ICF basement, I need to remove the drywall and would like to know if there is a specific way to do it without damaging the ICF.?

Well if the drywall is screwed into the cross ties with drywall screws, you can find the screws and remove them. It should come right off without much damage to the foam underneath. If someone put it up with adhesive, well that probably isn't coming off without damage to the foam... Good luck!

Oops, double tap...

I am hoping there was no glue used, I had a feeling I'd be having to find all the screws and remove. JOY!

A magnet or a metal detector might speed things up a bit. Once you get started you can probably start pulling out slowly on the panels, they will probably just start pulling over the screw heads or perhaps break alongside the screw heads.

Curious why you need to remove the drywall? Is it water damaged or do you need to make modifications to the wiring behind the drywall? If making wiring modifications, there might be an easier way than ripping it all down.

Here is a simple but effective magnetic stud finder that uses rare earth magnets to locate the nails/screws in drywall:

http://www.amazon.com/CH-Hanson-03040-Magnetic-Finder/dp/B000IKK0OI

Posted By arkie6 on 20 Mar 2016 05:38 PM
Curious why you need to remove the drywall? Is it water damaged or do you need to make modifications to the wiring behind the drywall? If making wiring modifications, there might be an easier way than ripping it all down.

Where do I even begin..... Long story short... This is what I believe has happened. Builder pours engineered structural basement floor on cardboard void forms. Void forms collapse before concrete has cured causing extensive elevation differences across entire basement. Builder continues with build, drywalls basement and frames out bathroom and mechanical room. Builder decides on a second concrete pour over top of existing floor to "correct" and level, Pours up to and against previously installed drywall/framing. Thickness of this pour ranging from 1.5'' to near 5''.

 The floor needs to come out, so the entire basement will be gutted and redone, hence my original drywall question. I could technically get away with just removing the lower half but at this point I think the home owner wants everything opened up to see what other potential issues might be hiding and I don't blame him. $1.3M gets you a nice headache